He got rhythm.
Seated at the conference table, flanked by guy-in-a-bow-tie
(hey, buddy, the sign says ‘White House’, not ‘Barber Shop’) and baby-faced-woman
with Lady-Exec hairstyle, the President is a picture of panache: Barack Obama, who
doesn’t have to try….too hard.
Apparently effortlessly, he is establishing the
likelihood of American air strikes against the Assad regime. Of course there
are cracks to be covered, not least the anomaly of stopping to explain the
effectiveness of imminent military action. Which can only have the effect of making it
less than imminent, thereby reducing its effectiveness. But the way he speaks
effectively conceals such flaws.
This presentation is a sit-down, low-key affair; cadences are
reduced accordingly. The rhythm’s the thing. It is audible throughout the
President’s remarks. We can hear it, for example, in his enunciation of the
following four words:
‘The kind of attack’.
Here they are broken down to show the underlying rhythm:
The Kind-of-a Ttack. Daa da-di-da daa.
In 4/4 time, beginning on the fourth beat of the bar: Crotchet,
Triplet, Crotchet, Rest.
Again: The (Crotchet)/ Kind-of-A (Triplet)/ Ttack (Crotchet)/ Rest (Crotchet).
Thus Obama’s phrase ‘the kind of attack’ is couched in rhythmic
form. His words acquire their sonority from the rhythm in which they are
couched. If certain phrases resonate with the public, it is because they are formulated
as rhythm; because they are composed of rhythm between words as much as the
words themselves.
It so happens that the phrase used above to describe Obama’s way
of speaking, is similarly comprised of the exact same rhythm: ‘the rhythm’s the
thing’; Daa da-di-da daa.
Exactly.
But the thing about rhythm is its combination of exactitude and
variation. Obama’s speech pattern is four beats to the bar. Precisely. But it
also sounds something like but not quite the same as the speech of previous
Rhythm Kings such as Martin Luther Jnr. Who patterned the democratic
aspirations of the day, who formulated the degrading experience of many into
one uplifting note, so that Obama could echo that sound and evoke its
democratic content 50 years later.
Except that as he evokes the sound, even as
he syncopates Reverend King’s rhythms as King himself previously played with lines laid down by Abraham a.k.a. Aaabr’m Lincoln, the content is removed,
discarded, negated.
So when Obama says ‘the kind of attack’, it matters little whether
he is talking about the Assad regime attacking Syrian civilians, or the U.S.
Air Force attacking Assad. What follows – the rest of the sentence – is largely
immaterial. What precedes it – evidence, whether there is or whether there ain’t
a case for causing further carnage – hardly comes into it. The substance – such
as it is – is derived from the past; from the way that Obama’s speech pattern evokes
a tradition of evocative rhythm.
(From an idea developed by Mark Beachill in his doctoral
thesis.)
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